Posts Tagged "internet"

From media and communications to banking, an increasing number of our daily activities is performed online. While this transformation has raised the curtain on exciting new frontiers, it also opens doors to security threats undreamed of by previous generations. In Scientific American’s newest eBook, Cyber Hacking: Wars in Virtual Space, we peer behind the scenes [...]

I don’t believe in God—at least, not any version I’ve encountered so far—but I do believe in free will. Free will, which I define as our capacity to recognize and act on choices, is what makes life meaningful. I can’t be sure that free will exists, so my belief is, I suppose, a faith. And [...]

Every week, hockey-playing science writer John Horgan takes a puckish, provocative look at breaking science. A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science (Addison Wesley, 1996) and The End of War (McSweeney's, 2012). John can be found on Twitter as @Horganism.

A recent report from Europol’s European Cybercrime Center includes a forecast that the world’s first “online murder” will likely occur before the end of 2014. Obviously this is a frightening concept and one that a number of news outlets quickly seized upon with ominous headlines. However, there’s a far more dangerous story that underlies this [...]

Richard Yonck is a foresight analyst, author and speaker at Intelligent Future Consulting. He’s guided businesses through the ever-shifting technology landscape for over two decades and writes extensively about the future and emerging technologies for numerous publications. Yonck lives in Seattle, where he is currently working on his latest book, “The Emotional Machine,” an exploration of the promise and perils we’ll face as computers become increasingly capable of reading, replicating and manipulating our emotions.

Recent reports from ABC News and the UK’s Mail on Sunday suggest eBay is providing a platform for sellers engaged in an illegal prescription drug trade. An ecommerce pioneer now ranked number 250 on the Forbes magazine rankings of the largest public companies on Earth, eBay’s corporate success doesn’t appear to translate into sufficient success [...]

Dr. Ford Vox, MD, is a physician and journalist based in Atlanta. He writes about medical practice, health care policy and medical science. He practices brain injury medicine at the Shepherd Center, a hospital dedicated to serious brain and spinal cord injury rehabilitation.
Ford can be found on Twitter as @fordvox.

Editors note: Craig Fay will be appearing live at the Laughing Devil Comedy Festival in New York City May 14-18. Here’s a theory for you: ignorance is bliss. If that’s true then being scientifically literate has got to be one of the most miserable and frustrating things possible. And when you think about it that [...]

Craig Fay is a Toronto based stand-up comedian whose unique ability to make science funny has seen him perform at the world famous Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal. Check out his website CraigFay.com. Craig can be found on Twitter as @CraigFayComedy.

Cyber is everywhere: in political speeches, in newspapers, at dinner conversations. There’s cyberwar and cybersex and cybercafés (they still exist, I promise), and there’s the U.S. Cyber Command. Once in a while, there is a new surge of articles arguing that the word “cyber” is vague, dated and that we just should get rid of [...]

Camille François works on cybersecurity, cyberwar and cyberpeace. She is based at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where she is a Fellow, and at Columbia University Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies, where she holds a visiting scholarship. Prior to that, she worked for Google as a researcher, worked with various US and French Governmental Agencies, held a Fulbright Fellowship and used most of her free time for free culture and free software advocacy.

Last week, I spent a pleasant hour over lunch talking to my 60-year-old aunt and her 80-something husband about "this Twitter thing" and how one defines a blog. They had heard that social media had played a role in the protests in Egypt and wanted to learn more. Good students, they nodded and asked questions [...]

A speculative but intriguing discussion that sometimes crops up when talking to people engaged in exoplanetary science goes like this; let’s suppose that we find an unmistakably terrestrial style planet around a relatively nearby star (less than about 30 light years away), perhaps even around one of the Alpha Centauri members, a touch over four [...]

Caleb Scharf is the director of Columbia University's multidisciplinary
Astrobiology Center. He has worked in the fields of observational
cosmology, X-ray astronomy, and more recently exoplanetary science. His books include Gravity's Engines (2012) and The Copernicus Complex (2014) (both from Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
Caleb A. can be found on Twitter as @caleb_scharf.

In 1995, Ivan Goldberg, a New York psychiatrist, published one of the first diagnostic tests for Internet Addiction Disorder. The criteria appeared on psycom.net, a psychiatry bulletin board, and began with an air of earnest authenticity: “A maladaptive pattern of Internet use, leading to clinically significant impairment or distress as manifested by three (or more) [...]

Wallets, wreckage and digital coin. Before the new year appears, let’s look at some of the most important technology stories Scientific American covered over the past 12 months. North Korean “cyberwar” rhetoric escalates President Barack Obama says the digital attacks in November on Sony Entertainment—allegedly by North Korea or some agent acting on its behalf—did [...]

Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots. Larry can be found on Twitter as @lggreenemeier.

President Obama announced his support Monday for net neutrality. And Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz let loose one of his biggest howls, tweeting: “Net Neutrality” is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government. — Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) November 10, 2014 Cruz really really does not like net [...]

Just when it seems there’s a mobile app for just about everything, psychologists have shown there’s room for one more: they are using smartphones to help them better understand the dynamics of moral and immoral behavior out in the community. A team of U.S., German and Dutch researchers has used Apple iOS, Google Android and [...]

Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots. Larry can be found on Twitter as @lggreenemeier.

One of the Internet’s greatest assets is also perhaps its biggest curse—it never forgets. Except in the European Union, where a court last month ruled that people have the right to have certain sensitive information about themselves deleted from Google search results. (pdf) As of Tuesday morning, the region’s most popular search engine has received [...]

Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots. Larry can be found on Twitter as @lggreenemeier.

The United States is not the greatest country in the world, at least when it comes to information and communication technology. Last month, the World Economic Forum released its 13th annual Global Information Technology Report, which ranks the nations of the world by their “networked readiness” – that is, how much each country can use [...]

Nicholas Negroponte, the visionary computer scientist who founded the One Laptop Per Child initiative, now says he wants to connect the “last billion” people on the planet. He told the audience at TED on Monday in Vancouver that his next project would be to bring connectivity to rural people around the world who have so [...]

Tech companies—Facebook, Google and IBM, to name a few—are quick to tout the world-changing powers of “big data” gleaned from mobile devices, Web searches, citizen science projects and sensor networks. Never before has so much data been available covering so many areas of interest, whether it’s online shopping trends or cancer research. Still, some scientists [...]

Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots. Larry can be found on Twitter as @lggreenemeier.

In many ways “big data” and “encryption” are antithetical. The former involves harvesting, storing and analyzing information to reveal patterns that researchers, law enforcement and industry can use to their benefit. The goal of the latter is to obscure that data from prying eyes. That tension was at the core of a conference this week [...]

Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots. Larry can be found on Twitter as @lggreenemeier.

Many of the Web sites we visit every day are under cyber attack by malicious hackers looking to disrupt business transactions, discourage people from using a particular online service or exact payback for some real or perceived slight. One of the most common ways to bring down a site is to flood its computer servers [...]

Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots. Larry can be found on Twitter as @lggreenemeier.

Hard to believe that our mundane social media banter could have an impact on the civil war raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo for more than a decade. The problem isn’t the content of these messages, it’s the devices used to send them. Smartphones, tablets, PCs and other devices often have electrical components made [...]

Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots. Larry can be found on Twitter as @lggreenemeier.

As you’ve no doubt read, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is stepping down from the company he co-founded three decades ago. Tim Cook will take over the reigns for the long-term, and has served as COO since 200. For those who don’t follow Apple nerdery obsessively like I do, This Is My Next has a profile [...]

An engineer and policy researcher who writes about energy, technology, and policy - and everything in between. Based in Austin, Texas. Comments? david.m.wogan@gmail.com David can be found on Twitter as @davidwogan.

When Lady Gaga tells us in her latest hit single that everything she does is “for the applause,” is that a message that we should be celebrating? Or is it something to worry about? And, while we’re talking Gaga, what about her well-known proclamation that people are who they are because they were Born That [...]

Melanie Tannenbaum is a doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she received an M.A. in social psychology in 2011. Her research focuses on the science of persuasion & motivation regarding political, health-related, and environmental behavior. You can add her on Twitter or visit her personal webpage. Melanie can be found on Twitter as @melanietbaum.

Today, sitting down to my Twitter feed, I saw a new link to Dr. Alex Berezow’s old piece on why psychology cannot call itself a science. The piece itself is over a year old, but seeing it linked again today brought up old, angry feelings that I never had the chance to publicly address when [...]

Melanie Tannenbaum is a doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she received an M.A. in social psychology in 2011. Her research focuses on the science of persuasion & motivation regarding political, health-related, and environmental behavior. You can add her on Twitter or visit her personal webpage. Melanie can be found on Twitter as @melanietbaum.

In case you haven’t heard, Carlos Danger — AKA shamed former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner — recently got in trouble once again for exposing his infamous…well, his infamous wiener. Everyone’s had fun ragging on Weiner for his online gaffes. Two years ago, Weiner accidentally exposed a meant-to-be-privately-sent picture of his privates to the entire [...]

Melanie Tannenbaum is a doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she received an M.A. in social psychology in 2011. Her research focuses on the science of persuasion & motivation regarding political, health-related, and environmental behavior. You can add her on Twitter or visit her personal webpage. Melanie can be found on Twitter as @melanietbaum.

When’s the last time you had an online fight? Unfortunately, most of us probably won’t have to try particularly hard to recall the last time that this happened. In a recent survey, 76 percent of almost 2,700 respondents indicated that they have witnessed an argument over social media, 88 percent of respondents [...]

Melanie Tannenbaum is a doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she received an M.A. in social psychology in 2011. Her research focuses on the science of persuasion & motivation regarding political, health-related, and environmental behavior. You can add her on Twitter or visit her personal webpage. Melanie can be found on Twitter as @melanietbaum.

If you like to surf porn on the Internet, you’ve got company. In a 2008 survey of college students, 90 percent of males and 60 percent of females had been there, done that. The practice is only half as common among people in their 40s, but still hardly rare, and the habits of youth are [...]

Ingrid Wickelgren is an editor at Scientific American Mind, but this is her personal blog at which, at random intervals, she shares the latest reports, hearsay and speculation on the mind, brain and behavior. Ingrid can be found on Twitter as @iwickelgren.

Last week Getty announced that they would release 35 million of their copyrighted images for editorial and commentary use with a handy embed tool. The system works a lot like the embed tool in YouTube and Vimeo videos – although the image can appear anywhere, it is very clear where it originated from and it’s [...]

Kalliopi Monoyios is an independent science illustrator. She has illustrated several popular science books including Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Find her at www.kalliopimonoyios.com.
Kalliopi can be found on Twitter as @symbiartic.

So I’m putting together this post on great evolution cartoons that focus on the water-to-land transition and I remember this Gary Larson cartoon from the Far Side that depicts three fish in the water staring longingly at their baseball lying on the shore, a few feet from the water’s edge. The caption reads, “Great moments [...]

Kalliopi Monoyios is an independent science illustrator. She has illustrated several popular science books including Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Find her at www.kalliopimonoyios.com.
Kalliopi can be found on Twitter as @symbiartic.

Pinterest is surely a rising star. For those of you not in the know, it’s the online equivalent of a bulletin board – a slicker, cleaner way to put together collages of your favorite styles, photographs, design ideas, or dino art. But lately, Pinterest’s terms of service have been garnering a lot of criticism for [...]

Kalliopi Monoyios is an independent science illustrator. She has illustrated several popular science books including Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Find her at www.kalliopimonoyios.com.
Kalliopi can be found on Twitter as @symbiartic.

The legacy of Wikileaks—the outing of secret government information—is all the vogue. It won’t stop with PRISM and the government contractor who fed The Guardian and The Washington Post the skinny on the U.S. surveillance program. The question is what comes next—and the only given is that there most certainly will be a “next.” This [...]

Gary Stix, a senior editor, commissions, writes, and edits features, news articles and Web blogs for SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. His area of coverage is neuroscience. He also has frequently been the issue or section editor for special issues or reports on topics ranging from nanotechnology to obesity. He has worked for more than 20 years at SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, following three years as a science journalist at IEEE Spectrum, the flagship publication for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He has an undergraduate degree in journalism from New York University. With his wife, Miriam Lacob, he wrote a general primer on technology called Who Gives a Gigabyte?
Gary can be found on Twitter as @@gstix1.